Seeking the New Earthhttps://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com
Of faith and fantasy, spirituality and science fiction. Stories and musings from a bunch of Christians passionate about faith, writing, and bringing the two together.Sat, 23 Sep 2017 10:15:02 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngSeeking the New Earthhttps://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com
Review: Horizonshttps://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com/2017/09/23/review-horizons/
https://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com/2017/09/23/review-horizons/#respondSat, 23 Sep 2017 09:53:01 +0000http://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com/?p=4763]]>Normally I would wait for any reviews until the end of the year for a roundup of “Year of Books” posts. If I read a good book by a small publisher or lesser-known author, though, I’ll probably make an exception. And this is one of them! So, without further ado:

On earth, a group of people have been gathered. They’re excited for an experiment that will lead them to work until they die. What could be better than that? Meanwhile, the Horizon makes it back from a deep-space mission dropping off colonists. One of twelve ships that can escape the solar system and travel to other worlds, Horizon‘s captain and third engineer are nearly legendary back home. They’re starting to show their years, though. When they’re ordered to earth (rather than home to Mars) and not told why, and people who ask questions start showing up dead, Captain Pamela Carlson and Third Engineer Mahlon Stewart need to work fast if they’re going to save their crew… and the future of the human race.

I’ve reviewed Prellwitz’s stuff before, and full disclosure: He’s become a good friend. He’s pushed me to read this particular novel of his before, and so… well, it was time.

And I have to say: This book rocks.

The opening chapter strikes a solid sci-fi vibe with great suspense factor, introducing us to the world. In fact, the novel in general presents nearly all the aspects of Prellwitz’s larger universe, and I believe very effectively. In particular I love his Pices, an offshoot of the human race that’s returned to the water. He’s created a unique culture and grammar for them that is just alien enough to be fascinating.

His characters are great, too. Pam Carlson gives me a Janeway (of Star Trek: Voyager) vibe, without reflecting some of the more preachy aspects of her character. Pam is a strong female captain that protects her crew like a mama bear. Mahlon is a grizzled engineer that makes me think of an older Scotty (from Star Trek). But please don’t think that these comparisons are me saying Prellwitz just copy-pasted the works of others; he didn’t. These are wholly original characters in a very unique setting.

The plot whizzes along. I don’t think there’s any downtime in the novel, and certainly no wasted pages. I don’t want to say too much about it, though, as much of the fun is in the discovery of the world and what’s going on.

There is one point that’s meant to be suspenseful, but you know exactly how it’s going to turn out. Thankfully, that one moment isn’t the climax – but it stood out to me as a weaker moment in an otherwise fantastic book.

He fell into the cave. Cold light tumbled in from outside, splattering all over dark stones and a dark, dark pool. He landed on his face with a startled yell, his cloak fluttering about him. A husky breath, two, and he jumped up, flinging his cloak behind him. His blade sang as he drew it with a smile. His eyes darted, searching the dark cave. Seeing no one, he relaxed and tried to get the dirt from between his teeth.

“We’ll skip that part in the epic, all right?” he muttered with a voice low and nasal.

“The part where you fell on your face? Yeah, I think it would sell better without that,” returned a commanding voice from a crystal that hung around his neck. “Listen, Kerthis, I think you need to concentrate on finding the treasure. We can edit later.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the hero answered as he glanced around the cavern. His eyes fell on the pool.

My pool.

“It’s underwater, isn’t it?” he groaned.

“Well, the scrying crystal doesn’t have much of a range for sight, but if you can’t see it anywhere else, that’d be my guess,” answered the voice.

“Great.”

Crunch crunch went his boots over the smooth, dark stones. Huff huff went his breath as he slipped off his boots. Flutter flutter went his cloak as he unclasped it. Huff whoosh went his breath at the edge of my pool.

Splash splash went the water as he surfaced again. Scrunch scrunch went the stones. Gasp heave went his lungs.

“What? I couldn’t see anything. What happened?” the crystal on his neck cried out.

“Skeletons. Lots and lots of skeletons.” Wretch wretch went his stomach, though nothing escaped his mouth. He didn’t vomit. That’s good. I hate the taste of that in my pool.

“Yeah. That’s what happens in these kind of caves. Lots of dead heroes.”

“You never told me!”

“You’ve never actually listened to an epic before, have you?”

“They’re all so long!”

“So why’d you hire me to be your bard again?”

Ripple ripple went the water. Shiny shiny went the waves. Flow flow went my surface as it formed a human face.

Screech screech went the hero.

“Ah. A water elemental. Shoulda guessed,” said the crystal around his neck.

Bubble bubble went the hero’s breath as I laid atop him.

“Kerthis, you gotta fight back. Stabby? You know?”

The man didn’t go stabby stabby. He flailed.

The crystal muttered, “I really hate when I have to bail him out.” It cleared its throat and shrieked out, “Hey! Hey! Water woman! I got a deal for you!”

Gasp gasp went the hero.

“Listen, my guess is you got all these heroes trying to take your stuff, right? That’s cause there’s all these stories that say this cave is full of treasure! Of course everyone’s looking around! That’s why Kerthis came – he thought it would sound good in his epic. Look, we can make sure no one ever bothers you again. Just let my paycheck escape, alright? He’s rich and just wants to make a name for himself. Saving damsels, all that stuff.”

Drip drip went my pool as I waited.

“I’ll write it into a new epic. Kerthis here checked out this cave, but there’s no treasure. The stories were all a lie to trap heroes. Let’s see here. Orc chieftain? Nah, they’d never be smart enough for something like that. Maybe some sort of half-giant. Yeah, that’ll sell. So, no treasure. He slew the giant, found no treasure, so everyone thinks there’s no treasure, and you’re never bothered again. That sound fair?”

Beat beat went his heart as I set him down on the stones. Tap tap went the crystal as I touched it.

“Yeah. Trust me, it’ll get me some coin in the local taverns. I’ll do it.”

Quiet quiet went my pool. Scramble scramble scuff he went up the cave to the outside.

I just finished the challenging novel Time’s Memory by Julius Lester. I’m not writing a review here – I’ll include it for next years “A Year of Books” roundup – but the book concludes with this thought: If your story is not remembered, you will cease to exist.

In part, I agree with this conclusion.

In our lives, we want our stories to be known. We want to be remembered. How wonderful it is when someone you haven’t seen in years sees your face and says, “I remember you! How have you been?” And maybe share a story about you with a friend you’ve never met! To have these shared stories binds us.

As a culture, we’ve lost our shared stories and replaced them with memes. We’ve replaced them with statuses. We’ve replaced them with facts.

None of those things are bad in themselves, of course. I enjoy reading a quick meme. Status updates from friends lets me know how they’re doing. Facts tell me about the state of reality.

But none of those things are stories. They can combine to tell compelling stories, but they are not stories in and of themselves.

In Time’s Memory, when people die, they long to be remembered. They need their stories told and remembered, or they cannot find rest. When they begin to be forgotten, their spirits become angry, despairing, vengeful.

I see that with people today. When someone is forgotten, when their story brushed off, they become angry, despairing, vengeful.

I think we forget sometimes that one of the greatest gifts we have is not telling our own stories, but listening to the stories of others.

I think that’s why authors are either the best listeners or the worst. The best authors listen to the stories around them and retell them. That way, when someone reads the tale, it’s almost like someone has heard their own story and repeated it back to them, reminding them who they are. A tale well told is medicine for the spirit, not because the story is good in and of itself, but because it reflects the reader.

The worst authors, though, tell their own stories, having refused to listen to those around them. These authors write only their own stories. Perhaps they are known, then, but it seems that they do not know.

We ache to share our stories. We long to be known.

And it terrifies us.

I don’t want you to know my story. Not really. Though I have learned to be more transparent than once I was, though I share more than I ever have before, there are still dark corners of my heart I won’t bring to light. I don’t want you to turn away in disgust. I don’t want to be rejected. And so I present my best face, my victorious face, my pleasant face, and not my true face. Not really. Masks are better. Masks are safer.

And yet I long to be known. I want my story told.

And here, here is why the Bible is the best story: it is my story, told over and over again, in blood and pain and redemption.

It tells me of what I have done: over and over again, I see people rejecting good, embracing evil, doing what they know to be wrong. And though those people lived two thousand years ago and farther back in time, I do what they do. Our stories are the same.

It tells me what I deserve: over and over again, there is just punishment.

It tells me what I have been given: over and over again, God brings forgiveness and grace.

Here, I see the God who knows my story, who remembers me, who has walked with me every dirty step of the way, and never abandoned me. Here is the God who remembers all my story… and chooses to die for a sinner like me.

My story is not forgotten.

And I will never cease to exist.

No one will. God knows all our stories. And it is either the story of the redeemed sinner clinging to Jesus… or it is the story of the sinner who refuses grace, and chooses hell.

No one ceases to exist. God remembers our stories.

I am thankful he has rewritten mine. I am thankful he came and blotted out the parts of my story – so many parts – where I rejected him, where I embraced sin. I am thankful he took those stains in my story and wrote them onto himself on the cross.

Because of Jesus, I know how my story ends. My story doesn’t end here in despair. It doesn’t end forgotten.

My story ends in glory, because Jesus died for me.

And my story is not forgotten. Never, ever forgotten – because my story is now His.

I watched her in the bookstore. I saw what spines she lovingly caressed and which she pulled out for further examination. I watched which she purchased, and which she sighed at in longing. And I knew that if I were to ever have a chance with her, we had to live in another world.

I was so scared. I had no other worlds to offer her. My imagination is linked to words on a page. I have never been able to make them myself. I have never been able to string together letters into words into sentences into whole worlds made of prose. But… but I saw the books she chose. And I knew that if maybe, maybe we loved the same worlds… would that be enough?

I broached the topic of books with her when we met in the fantasy aisle. She liked Gaiman. I preferred Pratchett. We laughed together. We ended up with coffee inside the store. We promised to meet again.

And we did.

And we read the same books. We found that yes, we loved the same worlds. Ness and Priest and Vance and so many others that we both knew. And I loved the worlds she loved. Eddings and Card and Weeks… Her worlds were… they were marvelous. The way she lit up when she talked about them. The way she looked when she read beside me at the coffee shop. The bend of her neck, the faint smile if it was any good, no matter the subject.

And then she opened up more worlds to me. She sent me PDF’s of the stories she had tried to publish. And I fell in love with each one.

And somehow, even though I offered her no worlds of my own, even though my words would never string together moons and barbarians and spells and spaceships, somehow… I was world enough for her. I do not know how. She brought me universes; I brought her coffee. But somehow, it was enough.

That was seven years ago, and now she sits, reading a world I purchased for her from the bookstore. And here I am, proofing her latest world.

I’m not sure which of us trapped which, but I am delighted by my prison. And if one day the worlds that spring from her fingertips stop, I will be contented with the worlds in her eyes. And if those worlds close to me, I will love her still.

She is worlds enough for me.

And somehow, somehow, I have become worlds enough for her.

And that, that is beyond anything I ever could have imagined on any world.

]]>https://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com/2017/09/15/many-words-many-worlds/feed/3jonmastEvery Wordhttps://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com/2017/09/09/every-word/
https://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com/2017/09/09/every-word/#respondSat, 09 Sep 2017 08:20:52 +0000http://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com/?p=4750]]>First off, if you don’t know who Alexander Rybak is, do yourself a favor and watch some of his stuff. He’s a Norwegian fiddle player pop star Russian dude. And his music is fun. He also did the voice of Hiccup in the European version of How to Train Your Dragon. As such, he also did a song for the movie. It’s a fun song, and my daughter sings it often.

But in a song about adventure and companionship, there is one line that always gets me: “I will believe your every word.”

Why?

Out of all the lyrics in that song, why does that one grab me and make me long for it?

I’m a pastor! People believe me pretty often! They trust me – some far more than they should! I’ve made it a habit of speaking the truth whenever I can, and if I don’t know an answer, I fess up to it.

And yet… there’s a lot of people who don’t believe me, because they don’t believe the God I follow. But then, wouldn’t the issue be, “I will believe your Bible”? I really don’t think this is some pious longing for God’s Kingdom to grow in the hearts of those around me. I do have that desire, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.

So what is going on here?

I think it comes down to… to a deep longing for trust on a level that we don’t experience in this world.

When people trust everything they’re told, they’re not considered smart. They’re considered naive. I remember teasing some friends… well, maybe I wasn’t being a good friend. No, that’s not fair. I was being a bad friend. But I remember teasing classmates in high school and college about not knowing how certain things worked. Kids are brutal to each other with that kind of thing. “You mean you don’t know?!”

And then, for me at least, that leaks over into insecurity. Is this person really my friend? It’s not a pity thing? It’s not a joke of some kind? This person really loves me? No way. I don’t think that’s possible. I don’t love me; how could someone else love me?

And the God that I say I trust… how often do I second-guess him? “Really, you’re my shield? You’ll protect me? Sure, you go ahead do that, but just in case you don’t, I’m going to worry until I find a better solution.”

Can you imagine? “I will believe your every word.”

Can you fathom a world where there’s that level of trust? Where if you told me you loved me… I believed you? And where there was no teasing for naivete… because we were all that way? Where if I told you that yes, I’ll be there, you believed me – because I would always follow through?

Can you imagine a world where of course you believed my every word… because my every word was only truth?

And I think that lyric awoke that longing in me. That desire for a place with no deceptions, no masks.

Where every fiction opened the eyes to some grander truth. Where every story sang of sunlight, because darkness brought only rest and no peril. Where every song pointed to what was real, because what is longed for is already right here?

Can you imagine?

Listen to the song again, and savor that lyric, and consider: when you write, is it worth believing?

I’m not saying get rid of fiction. I adore fiction.

But does it point to some truth? Maybe something about how the world works? Maybe something about how we long for something greater? Maybe something about how human nature isn’t what it should be?

Should I believe your every word, even your fiction?

I think the best fiction is worth believing. Lewis? Tolkien? Some places it’s easier to see than others.

In your writing… let it be something worth believing. And someday, Lord willing, we’ll be in that place where we’ll fully believe his every word… and each others’.

Her scent is almost gone from the house. I started by cuddling with her pillows. Her lingering fragrance helped me sleep, but of course soon enough I obliterated any trace of her there. Instead of my bride, I smelled me. My sweat, my fear, my guilt, all of it on her pillow, because I cannot get rid of my own scent. I want to. For anything I would blot out my own smell, for anything I would breathe her in again.

I tried sleeping with her clothes, the way she’d slept with mine before, bundling up the shirt in just that way and holding it against her so she could inhale me all through the night.

Why would she ever want to breathe me in?

Sleeping with her clothes… it didn’t work. None of the clean clothes smelled like her. Just detergent. Just that clean soap smell that had nothing to do with me and so little to do with her. I went through her dresser, pressure building up in my chest.

One of my friends who’d been stationed overseas told me once how he forgot what his wife smelled like when he was over there, and when you lose her scent, she becomes less and less real. He had wrestled for so long with that. I can’t imagine that nightmare. No, that’s not right. I couldn’t. I can now. God help me, I can now. When he got home and they ran toward each other, when they crashed together and clung to each other, holding as close as possible, tears leaking from their eyes, he wasn’t just soaking in the sight of her. They’d had that through the net. He wasn’t just absorbing the feel of her. No. He inhaled her into himself, pulling her in, making her real again. He’d forgotten her in so many ways, but now they were reunited.

I will never be reunited with my bride. I didn’t want to forget her like some sort of Alzheimer’s. I saw my grandfather go through that. The pain in his eyes as he saw people he knew he was supposed to know, but he couldn’t remember. And me? How could I forget my bride?

But her scent was vanishing every day.

I stalked the house, trying to find some trace of her. Something, somewhere. The kitchen? Though she loved to bake there, the spices obliterated any other scent. Dirty laundry? Yeah. I got that desperate. But even that, too, soon faded. I sat in her car, breathing her in, trying to lock away that odor in my memory, the mustiness of it, the little touch of laughter hidden between sweat and flour. Her scent never smelled like mine. It wasn’t like a locker room or someone running. It wasn’t perfume. It wasn’t like that. But the scent of salt and… and health, I suppose.

I’m glad no one could see me sitting in her car in the garage, sobbing, just wailing out, howling, barely able to breathe anything in because of my running nose and running eyes.

I stared at all the photos, of course, hanging on the walls, on the laptop, all of them. But so often she was behind the camera, and she didn’t really believe in selfies unless they were with someone else. But photos… they’re not scent. They’re not real. Just flat little pictures of what someone looks like. They’re not like scent. The scent of a person tells their story.

And her story.

Her story faded every day.

And that’s when I finally got really desperate. I told myself not to. I told myself that it would only bring me pain.

There’s this story. You probably read it in high school. About some idiot who hears the heartbeat of a man he killed, and it thunders at him until he basically confesses. It’s supposed to be his guilt.

Well, I didn’t dig her up because of any guilt. I missed her. I missed her story. I missed that mix of sweat and laughter and flour.

Decomposition destroys all those scents. And I got caught.

The worst part isn’t the media trying to get to me or the prison or the looks I get. The worst part isn’t that they think I did it. They’d never understand the truth of what happened that night. No one would. It doesn’t matter. Her scent is gone.

And that means I can’t remember her sacrifice anymore. I can’t honor what she did for me. For us. To save the world.

I started too late, and now twilight gripped the yard. I could barely see where I was mowing, but I was going to finish. To hell with only getting half the lawn mowed! So what if I got started too late, insisting on starting after the kids went to bed! I. Was. Going. To. Finish.

And so I raced sunset and lost. In the darkening twilight I finished… maybe. Maybe. Hard to tell, really. I think I did. Maybe when dawn brightens the yard it’ll reveal a terrible zig-zag of weeds and nice strips of mown lawn.

I hate mowing that lawn. I loathe it. But tonight, there was nothing more I wanted to do than to complete the task.

Back when I was still doing job interviews, I was often asked what my best and worst qualities were. I always answered the same for both: My tenacity. Once I take a task between my teeth, I don’t know when to stop. Even if I can’t see where I’m going.

Sometimes that tenacity is good. I hate mowing the lawn, but now it’s done. I complete tasks, no matter how I feel about them.

But… sometimes that’s really not a good thing. Like when arguing. I can’t let things go. Really not an attractive thing in most people, much less pastors. The positive here is that I’m aware of it, so it’s something I can work on.

So… what does that have to do with anything?

Hi! You’re reading a blog post on a blog that’s been resurrected and died numerous times. I’ve tried the writing and publishing thing a number of times. And it’s not like I don’t write in my day job – in my life as a pastor, my primary non-family vocation, I write weekly sermons, Bible studies, I’m writing a confirmation curriculum… and yes, though I wed what I write to the Bible, though I serve Scriptures, it still involves a lot of writing muscles to figure out how best to explain or illustrate what’s going on. I could focus all of my writing ability there.

But… imagination.

I love telling stories. Not every story is about Jesus. Many are. There are definitely stories with Christian themes on this blog.

And I’m now in a place where… I have the ability to write for fun, at least for now. I’m sure at some point (cough cough Lent cough cough) I’ll have to go on a hiatus. But now, I get to chase the sunset again. I have this task I’ve set before me:

Write.

Write purely for the joy of writing.

And if I get something published? (Like yesterday!) Awesome! Every once in a while I write something and I say, “Well, this one isn’t for the blog. Let’s see if there’s someone accepting submissions that this fits…”

Because I still have this task I’ve taken between my teeth: Let’s get published. Let’s keep pushing and seeing what talent and skill develops.

It’s this tenacity thing again. I just don’t give up.

So once more the blog is plugging along! Once more I get to throw stories out there.

“Follow the spaghetti,” Brenda growled. She slammed the door after her, rattling the mugs in the nearby cupboard.

I may be telepathic, but that doesn’t mean I always know what she’s thinking. That’s the hardest part of being a telepath, really. Everyone assumes you know what they mean, and it just doesn’t work that way. Her mind is connected in ways that I cannot fathom; I can’t read her at all. Not effectively. There’s a reason I love her so, so much. It’s hard to love someone when you know their darkest secrets, but she is the greatest and most delightful mystery in the world. I’m glad I can’t read her.

Sometimes that backfires, though.

I took a deep breath as I stood in the kitchen, looking at the door to the garage. The sunlight streamed in through the beige blinds over the sink, and the house was relatively still. Another breath. OK. Time to get to work.

Follow the spaghetti. Yes. That’s a special code we have. I told her once that the reason I don’t like reading women in general is that every thought leads to fifty thousand others, like a gigantic mound of spaghetti. Men are generally much easier to read; we tend to wall off our thoughts in little rooms. And so any time she makes a sudden jump from here to there in her thoughts, we call it her spaghetti.

But now I guessed something in the spaghetti got her angry, and she was especially angry because she thought I should know better.

I turned my mind back into itself to rewind my perceptions. Let’s see here. What was happening? She was asking what I wanted for supper. I told her it didn’t matter to me.

I smile. We’ve had the same or similar conversations exactly one thousand five hundred and six times since we got married all those years ago. As I’ve done some basic PTSD counseling for the police force, I’ve discovered pretty much everyone has those conversations, and everyone gets equally frustrated with them.

That’s not enough to make her slam the door and attempt to drive away, though. I could hear her cursing at the van; it still wouldn’t start. I really needed to get that looked at; it takes a bit of a trick when clicking the ignition, and it’s hard to hit when your hands are shaking the way hers probably were.

Brenda doesn’t get angry often.

So why was she angry now? It wasn’t the supper thing. There had to be something else going on.

Rewind. Farther back.

OK, more questions about the plans for tonight. It looked like she was getting angry here. I could see the telltale signs of the little spots of red on her ears. I really should have noticed that. I was too wrapped up in my phone, though.

So, that clue told me that I should have had plans for tonight. Why? What’s today?

Well. That does it, doesn’t it? Nothing like being a stereotype.

I ran out to the garage where she finally got the van started and the garage door open. “Bren! I’m sorry! Let me get dressed, and we’ll go out!”

Her eyes are puffy that way that makes me want to smile at her. She really is just so beautiful, but if I told her that now she’d just get more angry. She snapped, “Just meet me where I’m going!”

Great. She was testing if I could figure her out. When we dated it was a bit of a game. I could only deduce her destinations reading her male friends or her brother. She knew I had to use what I knew of her; I couldn’t really cheat. She got plenty clever, too, and it was… oh, the games we played and laughed at. But now, now I had no idea, and I didn’t think trying to visit her brother a few counties away and reading him would help.

And now it was going to make our anniversary… problematic.

OK. Come on, Mark. Follow the spaghetti. Follow her thought process. She must have dropped some clues, and if I can follow her train of thought…

Anniversary. She had asked about plans before asking about dinner. Was that a clue? Rewind. What was she looking at? She wasn’t looking at me when she was asking the questions.

Oh. Oh, what an idiot.

I stepped back into the house, back to the kitchen. I stood where she stood and tried to line up my eyeline where hers had been.

Yes. She was looking at the ad I put up on the fridge. For the concert I wanted to go to.

She was waiting to take me to the concert for our anniversary. She wanted to see me smile. And I forgot all about our anniversary and the concert because I was just wrapped up in little junk.

Figures. This is the way it works: She does something just so amazing, and I act like a lunk.

Well, this telepath followed the spaghetti. And now I’d meet her there. And maybe, with some luck, salvage our anniversary.

I think I’ll stop for some flowers before meeting her there, though. Apologies always help, and this one will be real. Brenda really is magical, and I intend to make tonight magical.

Well, now I am, anyway.

]]>https://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com/2017/09/01/the-telepaths-anniversary/feed/0jonmastTempus Fugithttps://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/tempus-fugit/
https://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/tempus-fugit/#commentsThu, 31 Aug 2017 10:06:04 +0000http://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com/?p=4735]]>I’m happy to announce that a story of mine has won a contest and is now published on the blog of eSpec Publishing. You can read it here — it’s the third story in the post, after the June winners.]]>https://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/tempus-fugit/feed/1jonmastA Year of Books: EXILED!https://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com/2017/08/26/a-year-of-books-exiled/
https://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com/2017/08/26/a-year-of-books-exiled/#respondSat, 26 Aug 2017 11:22:19 +0000http://seekingnewearth.wordpress.com/?p=4542]]>We have another shelf.

That’s also my nightstand of doom. WOO!We’ve just gone through the shelf of all shelves, the “what we read this year” shelf. We also have a “to be read” shelf. This isn’t the books we necessarily want to read first; these are the books we’ve bought in the past year. And it’s time to clean it out.

We’re going to be taking off any books that have sat there a year or longer; it’s not that they’re bad books (or at least we don’t know that at this point), but if they’ve sat there that long, it’s time to take them off. There are other reasons to remove books, too, which we’ll see. For this final “A year of books” post we’ll be looking at what’s getting removed from our “to be read” shelf, and why.

We both wanted to read this one. The back describes it as “If Charles Dickens and Jack Vance had ever collaborated, they might have written this book.” That just sounds fantastic. We just were never in the mood to read it. We’re keeping it, though!

There’s a limit to how many anthologies you can read. It’s a rule. I just made it up.

Time Twisters
Edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greeberg
Reason: Was on shelf for over a year

This one was Jon’s. He read enough anthologies this year; he just never got to this one.

Jon loves Zorro. He grew up watching the old black-and-white Disney version and the 90’s Family Channel version. He wanted to read the original. Just… never got to it. That’s one that will get read eventually, though!

Jon read a bunch of books in this vein. He expected it to be young adult, only to find it seemed to be aimed at adult audiences. That’s certainly not a bad thing, but when you’re expecting YA, it was a bit jarring. He set it down after two chapters and never picked it up again.

This one is book two in a series. It’s written by Doctor Who’s Captain Jack, so it should be awesome, really. The concept is fantastic – there are certain people that have the ability to make what they draw become reality. Jon just never got there. He’s going to keep an eye open for book one, though…

Helen picked this one up today for fifty cents. Yeah, the really lushly illustrated version. Library sales are wonderful. We’ve both already read it and we don’t feel the need to reread it,but man. It’s so nice having this edition. It’s pretty! And now, maybe we can finally force our kids to read it!

So, um, not a lot of shadows on that cover. Hopefully there’s some within the book.

I thought it was one thing; it was something else. This is book 2. I don’t think I’ll be reading this… maybe ever. Serves me right for not reading the fine print. Sigh.

We always search to “fill in the holes” of series we have. Every other removal from our “to be read” shelf from this point on is because we bought a book to fill in a hole… but maybe we haven’t read that far into the series, or we’re missing a book between where we are in the series and this one. It’s frustrating.

The covers of all these novels are pretty but… generic. Oh look! A boat!

Jon read the first in this nautical series and loved it. But we never see the books in used book stores! So when he spotted these at a local Goodwill, he snatched them up! Alas, they’re books six and eight. It’ll be a while before we find enough to fill in the holes…

Jon read book one in this series and loved it. Just fantastic fantasy tying together a whole bunch of fantasy worlds. I guess you could call it metafiction. A few writers are given responsibility to care for the atlas that shows how to get to any fantasy realm. Great stuff! This is book four, though, so yeah. We need to get the others to fill in the holes.

This is the cover we have. Also, did anyone else notice it’s “The” and not “A”?

Jon read book one of this series, was confused by it, but wanted to read on. We now own the first eight or so (this is book eight), but Jon hasn’t read past book one. He should really get on that. Bloody Jack is the series; it’s about a girl joining up with the British Royal Navy. Bad things happen. She becomes a pirate. Adventure at sea. You know, the normal.

This is a companion to the Last Dragon Chronicles. Helen’s read the first three books in the set. This book is about fiction, which she loves reading. But… she’s afraid of spoilers in this book, so she needs to read the other four books before she gets to this one.

Jon’s read Wheel of Time through book six. If he’s going to reread it, though, he’s starting over at book one. Which means the likelihood of getting to the prequel (which should be read between seven and eight…?) within the next year is unlikely. So, off the to be read shelf!

We keep an eye open for How to Train Your Dragon novels – the original series, not the ones based on the movies. They’re perfect reading for ten-year-olds. This one is book three; Jon hasn’t read book two yet. He should really get on that before his children read them.

Gah. They changed the style of the cover just for book four so it doesn’t match on my shelf. It un-behappies me.

Oh. If you haven’t read Unwind yet, you really need to. A frightening dystopia about a world where it’s legal to “unwind” teenagers. This book is the fourth (and final) in the set. Jon’s not read book three yet. It’s dark, and Jon needs to be in a certain mood to read them. So it’ll come… just not yet.

Well, that’s it! That’s a year of books with Jon and Helen Mast! Join us next year, when we, um, read more books. Do you have a To Be Read pile? Shelf? How do you decide what goes in it, and when do books get removed? Let us know in the comments! If you’re, you know, still with us.